Next Paul McCartney reissues

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AM Matt

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The reissues of Paul McCartney & Wings "Venus And Mars" & "At The Speed Of Sound" will finally hit shelves on Tuesday, September 23 with bonus material. Former Led Zeppelin drummer the late John Bonham appears on "Beware My Love" (from "At The Speed Of Sound") as one of those bonus tracks. Matt Clark Sanford, MI
 
I know "Silly Love Songs" gets a lot of criticism, but I will stick up for it. Of course, many liked the song, as it was the #1 song of 1976 in the USA (per Billboard Magazine). I do know that mass consumption and critical value don't always go hand in hand... :) Yet one thing I really enjoy about the song is the 3-part harmony. "What's wrong with that..."
 
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I'll also stand up for "Silly Love Songs." I may even grab the SPEED OF SOUND disc as I don't own that one on an anything other than a used radio station promo copy on LP.

Harry
 
I consider "Silly Love Songs" to be the perfect pop song, and the best thing that McCartney ever did! Just goes to show that music really is subjective.
 
Yeah, I'm with you, Murray! I really love that song, too. (And what better and more brilliant way for Paul to address his harshest critics in the world of music journalism than to write the most perfect simple pop song of all and make it about how there's really nothing wrong with a simple pop song!) On paper, it admittedly may not look like much, but it's executed amazingly well. I love how the song just keeps adding sections that all end up overlapping each other by the end of the song, with Paul and Linda and Denny all harmonizing together; by that last vocal breakdown, I usually have goosebumps.

Glad to see these next pair of reissues finally coming out! Paul has got a ridiculously huge vault of outtakes, most of which have still officially yet to see the light of day. It's not all gold, of course, but a lot of the stuff that ended up getting discarded is legitimately better than a lot of what did make the cut on his records. [Red Rose Speedway, for one, I'm not a particularly big fan of, but there are some really good cuts he recorded for that album that either ended up getting diverted as B-sides (i.e. "The Mess") or getting scrapped entirely ("Tragedy" and "Best Friend" being two of the more memorable outtakes). "Waterspout" is a London Town outtake that's never seen an official release, but it's arguably the best thing he recorded during the sessions for that album. Go figure!] So it's really great to see all these cuts from the vault finally go public, even if it's just a little bit at a time. I did not realize a version of "Beware My Love" existed with Bonham on it, so I'm particularly intrigued to hear that one. That song rocks awfully hard as it is with Joe English behind the kit, so I can't imagine what it must sound like with Bonzo!
 
Actually the worst song on any McCartney album in my book is "Cook of the House " from At the Speed of Sound.
 
Actually, this topic answers its own question...

You'd think that people would have had enough of "Silly Love Songs,"
But I look around me and I see it isn't so,
And what's wrong with that?

:hkitty::hola::exactly::santawave::ozewave::edthumbs::magoo::withstupid::pineapplecan:
 
OH NO!!!! Like that cat hasn't made enough money on stuuufff that he'd recorded, written, performed & produced!!!! (And gotten whatever stuff had been parodied & spoofed, reparations & restitution for! And don't forget MPL Communications, which to this day owns the BUDDY HOLLY fortune--his widow, María Elena Santiago sure didn't know enough about the music biz or be astute enough to be more than a "beneficiary"...)

His Estate will make Trump Towers a low-rent joint! The "Runner Up" (#4) for Worst Rock 'N' Roller in the book, The 100 Worst Rock 'N' Roll Records by John Gutterman and Owen O'Donnell...

I'd gotten his stuff on vinyl, from "Album 1" w/ "Maybe I'm Amazed"--the only thing I was sold on & appreciated whatever remakes were evolved from to, I think, up to McCartney II, since anything such as Tug Of War and Pipes Of Peace just got too far "out there"...--and that was it!

Had all of Lennon's stuff... (His career was short-lived that there truly wasn't a lot to have to have--and the only one that had any real "point"!) Ringo, I think I only owned Ringo, Ringo The 4th and the Blast From Your Past compilation... While George's only redeeming albums were All Things Must Pass and 33 & 1/3, though his Best Of, containing his Beatles contributions was also pretty neat!

I do like "My Love"--that guitar solo by Denny Laine gets to me--in a GOOD WAY--to this very day, as cheezy as the song and especially the mess of an album Red Rose Speedway was otherwise, though I loved singing "Big Barn Bed" filling the dairy & soft drink cooler at work!

There, of course, were remakes of that--at least by Andy Williams, in which the solo was done w/ a clarinet, while Wayne Newton's version had that same guitar solo, well, "replicated" by, I believe, Dean Parks...

"Silly Love Songs", though I think is a fairly good song; had it on a '45' b/w "Cook Of The House", which I also enjoyed... I thought Wings At The Speed Of Sound, was an OK outing--"Wino Junko", "Beware My Love" and "San Ferry Ann" have their hooks, "Warm And Beautiful" was what McCartney speaks of when he describes himself as "an excellent bass player, but a poor guitar player", if you've heard the solo on there...

I think "Listen To What The Man Says" from Venus & Mars was good, but all I liked from that album, of which I think, I would be going into too much detail to explain what I thought of the rest of his stuff I'd owned; just too much to explain, right now...

His "comebacks", of course were likely to become hype, after the last gasp of "Hope Of Deliverance", which there was enough US Radio to actually actively appreciate and play and there be the loyal listeners who welcomed it (though most really only love "the old stuff" just to paraphrase why "sales of Off The Ground had fallen"--read: Everybody interested in it, had bought it--and the remaining copies just got sent out to the cut-out racks!) Hype, as in stuff like New and Memory Almost Full, just can't get the airplay that the Good Old Radio Days have given his earlier stuff, and admittedly the man has gotten too long-in-the-tooth to do more than just turn the page to retirement, no matter how much "Yesterday" has changed countless lives...


-- Dave

P.S. I think I want to do an "Old"--that is a spoof on Mac's New if I can get some old florescent bulbs & handle the "broken" one safely!
 
I happen to also like "Cook Of The House" I remember getting the SPEED OF SOUND record from work and playing "Silly Love Songs", the full album-length version, and being amazed at all the extra stuff we weren't hearing on radio. Then "Cook Of The House" followed, and I thought it was a neat, uptempo song that was a throwback to an old 50's style rocker. Linda's vocals never bothered me.

Anyway, back to "Silly Love Songs". It's probably never heard today, but back in 1976, it was very common to hear the single-edit of the song on the radio. Stations didn't like exceeding that arbitrary 3:30 length, so a lot of longer songs got official edits by the record companies, and "Silly Love Songs" was no exception. Radio stations were sent 45 RPM records with the single edit on them, paring this particular song down to 3:28. I happen to have the promo 45 with that edit on it, and have recently digitized it for posterity. But I also recognize the the 45 is a bit noisier than it should be, so I've also undertaken the task of editing the digital album-length version down to the single length, removing more than 2 minutes of the recording. It's actually a simple edit. All you have to do is cut out the "rattling chains" opening, and then chop out a good 2-minute section from the middle.

Here, for your listening pleasure is the single-length edit of "Silly Love Songs", taken from the album-length version found on WINGSPAN. This is the way we all heard it on top 40 radio back in 1976.



You'd think that people would have had enough of silly love songs? Well, maybe the single length version is the answer.

Harry
 
Midland, MI Sunny 97.7 FM WMRX/WMPX also plays the short edit version of "Silly Love Songs" BUT at the beginning of the song, they kept the original slapping though!! Matt Clark Sanford, MI
 
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